Posts Tagged ‘unknown’

Hyolithids are a poorly understood group of critters. They first appeared in the Cambrian and became extinct during in the Great Dying(Permian-Triassic extinction) at the end of the Paleozoic. The Great Dying was the most severe crisis for the biosphere that the planet has ever experienced… about 95% of all species perished!

There are numerous hypothesis to explain the extinctions(google it), but it was probably a combination of several catastrophic changes that killed off most life.

I have encountered this strange structure a few times in my quest to understanding the Ordovician of Kentucky. It is rarely seen, and I always ignored the thing since it didn’t seem relevant to what I was studying. Though recently, I found a few of these, intimately associated, in what might be a lagoonal environment???*

That grabbed my attention, and I submitted photos of this thing to several well known paleo-researchers. Most had no ideal, but Dr. Young clued me in! Probably, algal balls. He suggested a thin section would be determinate, but I still haven’t cut the thing.

When informed of Dr. Young’s opinion, another researcher concurred, but he hadn’t seen any, this large, from the local biota; one other was skeptical.

So, have you seen anything similar?

mag x20

These were found in a mud bed, of limited lateral extent(a few meters), interbedded within the calcarenites of the Tanglewood mb. of the Lexington Limestone.

*perhaps, that is my familiarity with the barrier islands???

Too, why can't I figure out the code of wordpress?

I’m not a ‘puter geek, but I thought that the site was HTML??? Any suggestions?